2024: The Year College Sports Turned Pro

If 2023 was a year of legal chaos for the NCAA, 2024 was a year of legal transformation. 

Under the leadership of former Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, the NCAA enjoyed more success in court. The collegiate governing body persuaded judges to uphold the separation of NIL from employment, validate prize money rules and endorse the lawfulness of NCAA enforcement measures. 

But by negotiating a multibillion-dollar settlement that calls for colleges to pay athletes and by—thus far—failing to stop the advancement of efforts to recognize college athletes as employees, the NCAA is gradually morphing into a variation of a major pro sports league. 

Here are highlights—or lowlights, depending on your perspective—from college sports law in 2024:

The most legally significant development in college sports in 2024 occurred in February, when NLRB regional director Laura Sacks ruled that Dartmouth College men’s basketball players were employees within the meaning of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). 

She stressed the relevant legal question is not whether the basketball program is profitable—major companies report losses from time to time and their employees don’t suddenly become interns—and implicitly urged that people view the matter as one about labor, not sports. To that end, Sacks said the players are employees because they qualify under the applicable legal test: They perform work for Dartmouth in exchange for compensation (including preferred admissions into an elite university, per diem, clothing, sneakers, etc.) and the school has the right to control that work. 

Key to the situation: Dartmouth College has a tradition of employing students who in turn unionize, as students who work in dining services have done so and their union negotiated terms with their employer (i.e., Dartmouth). The Dartmouth basketball players, including one who also works in dining services, then voted to unionize. The players became the first unionized collegiate employee-athletes in American history.

Dartmouth College has petitioned the agency’s board to review and reverse Sacks’ ruling, but as of this writing, the board has not decided whether to review, let alone reverse. 

USC football and men’s and women’s basketball players could soon gain NLRA employment recognition as well. NLRB Administrative Law Judge Eleanor Laws is reviewing whether the University of Southern California, the Pac-12 and the NCAA are joint employers of Trojan football and men’s and women’s basketball players. She will determine whether USC athletes are employees within the meaning of the NLRA and misclassified as student-athletes.

Much has been speculated of President-elect Donald Trump reshaping the NLRB in ways that may be less amenable to a finding that college athletes are employees, but that might not prove true. Even if it does, it might not ultimately matter. The issue of whether these athletes are employees will almost certainly go from the NLRB to review by a federal court of appeals and possibly the U.S. Supreme Court. In other words, the NLRB is not going to have the final say. 

Also, if the Dartmouth players continue to remain unionized employees, it will set the table for other D-I athletes at private colleges to seek unionization. The prospective employment of athletes at public universities isn’t governed by the NLRA but is instead subject to state labor laws that vary widely across the country. 

Baker was known as a pragmatic dealmaker rather than an ideologue while he served as governor. That mentality seemed apparent when the NCAA, which for decades has stridently fought to separate college athletes from professional athletes, negotiated a settlement to resolve the House, Carter and Hubbard antitrust litigations that would feature colleges directly paying athletes subject to a pro sports salary-cap style limit. 

The settlement also calls for the NCAA and member institutions to pay some D-I athletes who have played since 2016 about $2.8 billion, with payments ranging widely by sport and other factors. The payments would occur over a 10-year period and reflect compensation for depriving athletes of NIL, video game and broadcast opportunities in recent years. 

U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken granted preliminary approval to the settlement and will consider giving final approval after hearing from objections and other concerns in a fairness hearing scheduled for April 7, 2025. Assuming the deal moves forward, colleges can elect to pay athletes for media rights, ticket sales sponsorships and NIL. Those schools, however, cannot exceed annual payments of about $21 million total. Also, NIL deals with third parties that exceed $600 will be subject to potential independent review to ensure those deals aren’t pay-for-play arrangements cloaked as NIL deals.

Wilken’s review of the settlement is based on whether it addresses the antitrust issues at play in the three cases and whether the settlement complies with the legal requirement that it is fair, reasonable and adequate to class members. It is possible that implementation of the settlement will trigger separate legal challenges under Title IX, the Equal Pay Act and immigration and other laws, but Wilken will focus on the antitrust components. 

There’s no getting around the fact that college sports in the post-settlement world will look more like pro sports. Some teams are getting ahead of the curve by hiring general managers and others whose job responsibilities parrot those employed by pro teams.

But as always in law, it’s wise to not make assumptions and even wiser to make backup plans.

To that point, Wilken is the key figure. She initially objected to granting preliminary approval of the settlement in a hearing where attorneys for the NCAA and players seemed confident—perhaps too confident—that she would readily approve. Settlements can also be rejected, as dramatically seen in the collapse of the Google Book Settlement. Wilken could delay granting approval so that the deal doesn’t go into effect for another year or two.

In July, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed the dismissal of the NCAA’s motion to dismiss Johnson v. NCAA. In the case, college athletes argue they are employees of their schools and the NCAA within the meaning of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and similar state laws that guarantee the right to minimum wage and, if applicable, overtime pay.  The Third Circuit rejected the NCAA’s longstanding position that college athletes cannot be employees and athletes at the same time. 

As FLSA employees, college athletes would be owed at least the same benefits as their work-study classmates, some of whom are literally paid to work at games where athlete classmates aren’t paid. Johnson could lead to the NCAA and colleges being ordered to pay many millions of dollars in unpaid wages and compelled to drop rules blocking pay. 

The case has returned to a federal district court in Pennsylvania but so far, it’s a winner. FLSA employment recognition would not allow the players to unionize. Unionization would instead require, among other things, NLRA employment recognition (for private college athletes) or equivalent state law employment recognition (for public college athletes).

The marketplace for college athletes has become more fluid with NIL and the transfer portal, yet it remains more restricted for some athletes than others. Enter Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia, who in November sued the NCAA in hopes of landing a preliminary injunction that would allow him to play in the 2025-26 season. He’s challenging NCAA rules that count his two seasons at junior college New Mexico Military Institute against his NCAA eligibility and that limit JUCO transfers to a maximum of three years violate antitrust law. The NCAA argues these rules comply with antitrust law. 

Last week, Chief U.S. District Judge William L. Campbell Jr. in Tennessee granted Pavia a preliminary injunction on grounds that, given NIL and other developments, college athletes work in an increasingly professionalized “labor market” for college football and restricting JUCO players is problematic under antitrust law. The NCAA can, and likely will, appeal. Pavia’s victory could spur other challenges to NCAA eligibility rules so that players can remain NCAA athletes for potentially many years—and earn NIL and revenue share monies—so long as they remain students. 

Although they vary, many NIL collectives appear to be recruiting vehicles with boosters pooling resources to dangle money to recruits so they pick a specific school. That type of activity is not “NIL,” which is intended to reflect the commercial use of an athlete’s right of publicity through endorsements, sponsorships and influencing deals, but is instead pay-for-play. 

The NCAA’s ability to regulate collectives was severely hampered in February, when U.S. District Judge Clifton Corker issued a preliminary injunction barring the organization from enforcing rules prohibiting college athletes and recruits from negotiating compensation for NIL with collectives and boosters. Corker reasoned that those rules, which were challenged by Virginia and Tennessee, amount to price fixing by competing businesses. Those businesses are colleges that join hands through the NCAA to set limits on athlete compensation. The ruling was a blow to the NCAA, which a week later suspended enforcement of those rules.

In a lawsuit filed in May, University of Georgia quarterback Jaden Rashada accuses University of Florida head football coach Billy Napier, UF recruiters and boosters of fraudulent inducement and related claims stemming from what Rashada thought was an enforceable $13.85 million NIL deal in 2022. The defendants say there was no deal and that Rashada is exaggerating ordinary recruiting promises. 

Although it didn’t spark a lawsuit, quarterback Matthew Sluka abruptly announced on social media in September that he was leaving UNLV because a school-related collective didn’t pay him what he thought was a $100,000 NIL deal. The Rashada and Sluka situations illustrate one of the problems of NIL when it is used not as legally intended—to compensate a college athlete for the commercial use of their right of publicity—but instead as a recruiting inducement, aka, pay-to-play.

The NCAA is in the midst of major reforms under Baker’s leadership, but it scored several legal victories in 2024 that strengthen its longstanding authority over college sports. 

In December, the Supreme Court of Mississippi ruled for the NCAA in a case where a former Ole Miss assistant athletic director challenged the constitutionality of the NCAA’s sanctions. The court held that the NCAA, a private membership organization where member schools and conferences voluntarily join, is not a state actor (an arm of the government, like a public university) and can enforce membership rules without the need to comply with due process and other Constitutional safeguards.

The NCAA has repeatedly insisted that NIL means compensation for the commercial use of an athlete’s right of publicity and not pay-to-play or employment. U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman agreed when he denied  motions brought by two former Overtime Elite (OTE) players—twin 20-year-old brothers Matt and Ryan Bewley—who maintained that although they received employment benefits while playing in OTE, that compensation ought to count as NIL. In a win for the NCAA’s attempt to distinguish itself as offering a different product than pro sports, Gettleman underscored that college sports offers a “unique product.”

The NCAA’s rules restricting prize money for athletes who participate in individual sports scored a win in October when U.S. District Judge Catherine Eagles denied University of North Carolina tennis player Reese Brantmeier’s motion for a preliminary injunction to prohibit prize money rules. Eagles was persuaded by NCAA arguments that the rules advance amateurism goals and stressed that the rules are unlikely to harm competition in an antitrust sense since they impact a relatively tiny number of elite college athletes. The ruling gives the NCAA reason to believe at least some of its amateurism rules can defeat antitrust challenges.

The NCAA’s ban on Canadian Hockey Players, which is predicated on those players being “pro” in that they are paid, effectively ended in November. The ban had become increasingly difficult to justify given that the NCAA allows D-I schools to play former pro hockey players from European teams even though they were pro athletes and given that college athletes can be paid for NIL. The NCAA’s decision also occurred as it faces a lawsuit brought by Ontario hockey player Rylan Masterson, who argues the NCAA and member schools have violated antitrust law by conspiring to “boycott” him and similarly situated players. 

The Ivy League and its eight member schools defeated an antitrust lawsuit over the conference’s policy to not pay its athletes compensation, including the conference’s no-athletic-scholarships rule. In October, a federal judge dismissed the lawsuit mainly on grounds that Ivy League sports is not a relevant market for antitrust scrutiny since athletes can attend other colleges that blend elite academics with D-I sports and receive athletic scholarships at those schools. The Ivy League is in for big changes, however, as it will participate in the NCAA Division I FCS playoffs, starting with the 2025 season.

While the tentatively approved settlement to resolve the House, Carter and Hubbard antitrust litigations would, if granted final approval, compensate some D-I college athletes for uncompensated use of their NIL provided they played as far back as June 15, 2016, that timeframe (which is limited by applicable statutes of limitation) doesn’t help college stars from years earlier who would have made NIL money. 

Several lawsuits were brought in 2014, including members of the 1983 N.C. State men’s basketball championship team, a group of athletes who played for the 1997, 2008, 2011 and 2014 NCAA men’s basketball championship teams, a group of former Michigan football stars, and Reggie Bush, who is suing USC, the Pac-12 and the NCAA. These cases face hurdles, including that antitrust claims normally have only a four-year statute of limitations and that these claims were already resolved through Ed O’Bannon’s successful litigation.

The Pac-12 sued the Mountain West Conference for imposing so-called “poaching penalties” on five member schools (Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, San Diego State and Utah State) that will join the Pac-12 in 2026. The penalties are allegedly $55 million. The Mountain West argues the legal claims are frivolous and concern a fee arrangement that was contractually approved. In a related development, the West Coast Conference sued Grand Canyon University, which had pledged to join the WCC in the 2025-26 season, after Grand Canyon spurred the WCC to join the Mountain West by no later than 2026. Even though these schools and conferences signed contracts that were designed to cover all contingencies and avert litigation, litigation has indeed surfaced. Expect more as conferences continue to realign.

It’s uncommon for a conference member to sue the league, and even more uncommon for multiple members to do so, yet that happened in 2024. Florida State and Clemson have battled the ACC in different states’ courts regarding essentially two issues: how much money a school would have to pay in a penalty to leave the ACC and whether the ACC handled media rights contracts in compliance with fiduciary duties. There are other issues packed in, but the cases are largely about member schools’ frustrations with revenue and limitations on how readily they can leave a conference. Given the role of conference realignment in recent years, how these cases play out could influence conference membership contracts in attempts to create more stability.

This year saw the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) effectively ban transgender athletes for all women’s sports other than for two co-ed sports, competitive cheer and competitive dance. Also, several noteworthy lawsuits concerning transgender athletes were filed, including one led by former University of Kentucky All-American swimmer Riley Gaines. She argues the NCAA, by permitting the eligibility of transgender athletes, denies opportunities for women athletes and violates Title IX, the Equal Protection Clause and the right to bodily privacy. Meanwhile, 25 states restrict or ban transgender athletes and President-elect Trump vowed during the presidential campaign to ban transgender athletes from women’s sports, though any federal ban would likely face legal challenge.